Norway Pays a Price for Family Values

By T. R. Reid, Washington Post, Sunday 1 November
1998; Page A26

Parents Receive Stipends To Stay Home With Children

OSLO, Norway—Like countless other women around the world, Suranhild
Aenstad decided to leave her job and stay at home after her first
child was born. Unlike most other young mothers, though, she paid no
financial penalty for choosing family over office.

Aenstad was hired by the Norwegian government for a new line of
work—staying home to raise her own daughter. The state paid the
new mother a yearly salary of $18,800, or 80 percent of what she made
as a secretary. With the savings on clothes and commuting, Aenstad
came out slightly ahead.

Last spring the baby, Serine—a buoyant blue-eyed blond with a
smile as brilliant as the autumn sun glistening on the Oslofjord
beneath her nursery window—celebrated her first birthday. At
that point, Suranhild Aenstad turned the household duties over to her
husband, Martin, who quit his job to stay home. So now it is he who
receives a monthly paycheck from the government for raising his own
child.

Politicians in Norway love to talk about family values, and in
that they're no different from politicians almost everywhere else.
What's different here is that Norway has put its money where its
mouth is.

The United States pays a small percentage of its mothers a monthly
stipend to help them raise and feed their children. These payments
carry a stigma. They are known as welfare, and generally are
available only to mothers who prove they can't find work. The
Clinton administration and most states have programs in place to
reduce the number of welfare mothers, and governors routinely
boast about how much their welfare rolls are being reduced.

Norway, in contrast, treats the monthly payment to parents as a
salary. Income and social security taxes are withheld, just as with
any paycheck. The payment is designed for working parents, to
encourage them to leave the job for a while and raise their
children. The government takes pride in statistics showing that the
number of recipients has been growing rapidly.

We have made a fairly basic decision—although, let's
admit it, it took us years to do it, said Valgard Haugland, the
leader of Norway's Christian Democratic Party and the minister of
Children and Family Affairs.

We have decided that raising a child is real work. And that this
work provides value for the whole society. And that the society as a
whole should pay for this valuable service.

It should be noted that this kind of thing is easier for Norway than
it might be for nations facing tighter budget strictures. This
beautiful northern land, where the icy fiords wrap their deep blue
fingers around leafy green hills, is the world's second-largest
exporter of oil, after Saudi Arabia. Even with the past year's
drop in petroleum prices, Norway has run up a big budget surplus while
expanding its generous network of cradle-to-grave state benefits.

Norway's package of parental payments has been put together
gradually. More than a decade ago, the government established the
initial maternity right, which pays a parent who leaves a job
to raise the baby 80 percent of his or her regular salary. This
program gradually has been extended, and now lasts for the first 12
months of the baby's life. When the year is up, the custodial
parent has a legal right to return to work—not just any job, but
the same job, with at least the same pay as before.

This is wonderful for me, that I could be home with Serine and know
that my career is protected, said Suranhild Aenstad, 24, who was a
secretary in a downtown office when Serine was born.

But it is not perfect. Women can suffer. We all know that some
companies don't hire a woman if they expect you are going to take
maternity leave in a few years.

Haugland, the cabinet minister who is known as the mother of
parental payments because of her support for the proposal, agrees
that this can be a problem. Of course we have made it illegal for
an employer to turn down a young applicant for this reason, she
said. But how do you prove it? They will never say they rejected
somebody because of maternity leave.

At the moment, however, losing out on a job is not a serious risk.
Norway's labor market is so tight—with the economy strong
and unemployment at 3 percent—that most employers will take any
qualified worker, no matter what the parental future might bring.

While the first-year maternity right is accepted across the
board in political circles, there has been more controversy about the
new parental payment plan, which pays for child care beyond the
first year of life. As of this fall, the government is paying
custodial parents during a baby's second year. Funding for a
third-year parental payment is proposed in the 1999 budget pending
before the Storting, or parliament.

The parental payment is considerably smaller than the first-year
maternity right, paying a little less than $5,000 per year. Parents
who don't choose to take it can go back to work and send their
children to government-subsidized day care, which is known here as
kindergarten. The law also says that medical treatment is free for the
first seven years of a child's life—but that's not such
a big deal in a country where medical care is subsidized and patients
generally pay no more than $10 for a doctor visit.

Almost all political parties in Norway are more liberal than the major
U.S. parties. But those on the left, by Norwegian standards, have
objected to the budget proposal that would extend the parental payment
to a child's third year.

This is partly because the more liberal parties have an ideological
commitment to conformity, and they say children should be sent to
licensed day care facilities instead of being raised at home.

In addition, the liberals object to the notion of paying parents who
choose not to take a job outside the home. When parliament was
debating the issue this month, Thorbjorn Jagland, the Labor Party
leader and former prime minister, complained that the parental payment
is a giveaway. Why would you pay somebody who does not hold down a
job? he demanded.

Sitting in his cozy apartment here, with 18-month-old Serine bouncing
happily on his knee, Martin Aenstad begs to differ. I've had
jobs, and now I'm raising my daughter. And I can tell you that
being a house-father is hard work.

At least when I was on the job, they gave me a lunch break. If
Serine is hungry or crying or has a full diaper—well, you try
telling her that Daddy needs a lunch break.